The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate electronic documents on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include navigating and editing an electronic document. A user may need to perform such manipulations in any application that includes electronic document viewing and editing capabilities (e.g., a drawing application, a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a website creation application (e.g., iWeb from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.)).
But existing methods for navigating and editing documents are cumbersome and inefficient, especially on devices with a small form factor, such as handheld or pocket-sized devices. In addition, existing methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.